Olympic torch casts light on Mormon faith

February 24, 2002|By Lisa Bertagnoli. Special to the Tribune. Lisa Bertagnoli is a freelance writer who lives in Chicago.

Before the bidding process for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, Mormons were but a blip on the national sociological screen, known primarily by their proselytizers, clean-cut young men wearing dark suits and white shirts and arriving at doorsteps on foot or bicycle.

Now that the Winter Games are taking place in Salt Lake City, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has garnered as much publicity as the events themselves. And with good reason: In Utah, the Mormon Church is nearly impossible to separate from the state. Mormons account for 70 percent of Utah's population of 2.2 million. Its entire Supreme Court, 90 percent of its state legislature and 80 percent of its state and federal judges are Mormons.

The religion is fast becoming a national presence. In just 180 years--"that's last Tuesday in the world of religions," says one church historian--the Mormon Church has become the fifth-largest religious body in the United States. To be sure, its 5.2 million membership pales in comparison with the 63.7 million-member Roman Catholic Church. But if trends continue, within 40 years Mormons could account for 5 percent of the U.S. population, and by 2080 they could number in the hundreds of millions worldwide.

The Mormon Church's breaking into the top five is so noteworthy that the National Council of Churches used the news in February to announce publication of its annual Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. "As religions go, it's young," says Eileen W. Lindner, editor of the yearbook and a church historian. "And it has had a history of persecution. That also makes it different from most churches."

The church was founded in 1830 in upstate New York by Joseph Smith, a former Presbyterian. Smith said that, at age 14, he was visited by heavenly messengers who told him that the current incarnation of the church was "all wrong," as Smith later wrote. According to Smith, subsequent visitations from angels led him to discover a set of golden tablets upon which the Book of Mormon was written. Smith's publication of the Book of Mormon marks the church's founding.

In the early days, Smith's followers went from settlement to settlement, including a stop in Nauvoo, Ill. Along the way they endured persecution for their beliefs and lifestyle, which at the time included polygamy. In 1847, a group of Mormons, headed by Brigham Young, began migrating westward, landing in the territory that in 1896 would become Utah.

Today, whether the Latter-day Saints should be deemed a "Christian" church is a matter of some debate among church historians. According to Lindner, non-Mormons who study the church say that Smith set out to renew Christianity but in fact developed a new religion.

Robert L. Millet, a Mormon and professor of religion at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, says that Smith was called as a prophet to restore, not renew, Christianity. Smith, he says, stripped away the Greek philosophical baggage that had become attached to Christianity over the ages, restoring the religion to its condition circa 30 A.D., when Jesus was still on earth.

Mormonism shares some tenets of Christianity and rejects others. Mormons accept the historical Jesus as set forth in the New Testament and believe he fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament, as do Protestants. They reject the doctrine of the Trinity, a major tenet of Catholicism and Protestantism, believing instead that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three separate entities. They believe Jesus was not always God; that before being born a human, he was another "spirit child," as are all humans prebirth in the Mormons' view.

60,000 missionaries

The church's focus on one of Jesus' teachings might well be the single biggest reason for its percolating growth. Known as the Great Commission and found in Matthew 28:19, this teaching bids Christians to "go ye therefore and teach all nations." For Mormons, this is serious work. There are 60,000 Mormon missionaries proselytizing worldwide. About one-third of them are in the U.S.

Their recruiting efforts are bolstered, experts say, by a straightforward belief system. "In a world of ambiguity, black-and-white theology is an asset," Lindner says.

Lindner adds that in a society plagued by drug and alcohol abuse, the Mormons' insistence on a healthful lifestyle--tobacco, alcohol and caffeine are prohibited--also proves attractive.

Indeed, becoming a Latter-day Saint is, by conscious design of the church hierarchy, a matter of lifestyle and not simply a Sunday-only proposition.

The involvement starts young. Boys are commissioned as priests at age 12 and embark on two-year missions when they turn 21; young women may choose 18-month missions. Missionaries and their families, not the church, pick up the tab for these missions, many of which are to foreign countries.